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Nabokov's Amphiphorical Gestures Studies in 20th Century Literature Volume 11 Issue 2 Article 3 1-1-1987 Nabokov's Amphiphorical Gestures S. E. Sweeney Brown University Follow this and additional works at: https://newprairiepress.org/sttcl Part of the Modern Literature Commons, and the Russian Literature Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Sweeney, S. E. (1987) "Nabokov's Amphiphorical Gestures ," Studies in 20th Century Literature: Vol. 11: Iss. 2, Article 3. https://doi.org/10.4148/2334-4415.1196 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in 20th Century Literature by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Nabokov's Amphiphorical Gestures Abstract In addition to using two primary kinds of metaphors (those that clarify descriptions, and those that develop into leitmotifs), Nabokov's fiction demonstrates a third kind that is characterized by extended analogies, baroque, seemingly uncontrolled imagery and rhetoric, and, most importantly, fundamental ambiguity. Although this inherent ambiguity is developed throughout the comparison, it is never resolved. Because of this distinguishing characteristic, I have named such metaphors "amphiphors," after one of Nabokov's own neologisms. Nabokov's comments in Nikolai Gogol and Lectures on Russian Literature, as well as direct allusions to Gogol embedded in a few amphiphors, suggest that this device evolved directly from Gogol's absurd, overgrown images and Protean minor characterizations. Yet, whereas Gogol's "spontaneous generation" is careless, uncontrolled, and comical, Nabokov uses his amphiphors deliberately for ironic effect. More precisely, he exploits the gap between the initial and final points of the comparison to create a sustained and irreconcilable ambiguity—what William Empson called the seventh type, "at once an indecision and a structure." Moreover, close textual analysis of the mechanics of several amphiphors, from Speak, Memory and Bend Sinister, shows marked similarities in content and authorial intention. In each instance, Nabokov uses the amphiphor's inherent stylistic ambiguity to delineate a similar phenomenological one: his own ambivalence towards death (whether his own, his father's, or his hero's) and the insolubility of its "monstrous riddle." Keywords Nabokov, metaphor, leitmotif, fiction, intended analogy, analogy, baroque, imagery, rhetoric, ambiguity, amphiphor, neologism, Nikolai Gogol, Lectures on Russian Literature, Gogol, Speak Memory, Bend Sinister, death This article is available in Studies in 20th Century Literature: https://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol11/iss2/3 Sweeney: Nabokov's Amphiphorical Gestures NABOKOV'S AMPHIPHORICAL GESTURES S. E. SWEENEY Brown University I. Metaphors and Amphiphors "A title must convey the colour of the book-not its subject," Knight's faithful amanuensis, Clare Bishop, declares in The Real Life of Sebastian Knight.' This essay's title, which is intended to convey the ambiguous nature of some of Nabokov's metaphors, is paraphrased from a dazzling example in Bend Sinister, in which thought, personified as a circus performer, displays "the extreme simplicity of heaven in the acrobat's amphiphorical gesture."' "Amphiphorical" is a word noticeably absent from its expected place in the Oxford English Dictionary between "amphioxus" and "amphipneust" (two species of fish); it is probably a "portmanteau word," which Humpty Dumpty defined in Through the Looking Glass as two or more words compressed into one, with the original meanings retained.' Because "amphi-," as a prefix, means two kinds or two sides, and "amphiboly" means ambiguity, Nabokov's port- manteau implies not only a two-sided sign-a gesture made with both arms-but also a metaphor with two possible interpretations. Before examining other possible ingredients in the "amphi- phorical" portmanteau, or looking more closely at the metaphor from Bend Sinister (quoted here only in part), we need to understand the importance of such imagery in Nabokov's work. The metaphorical level was essential to Nabokov, both in the way he wrote and organized his fiction, and in the way he intended it to be read. His responses to others' novels, preserved in his Lectures on Literature and Lectures on Russian Literature, tend to focus on metaphors and conceits; reading Madame Bovarv, for example, he treats detailed descriptions of Charles's schoolboy cap and of Charles's and Emma's wedding cake as metaphorical paradigms for the structure of the 189 Published by New Prairie Press 1 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 11, Iss. 2 [1987], Art. 3 190 STCL, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Spring, 1987) entire novel.' Such scrupulous attention to individual images and sen- tences, as well as his thoroughly underlined, illustrated, and annotated copies of these same novels, and the revelation, in a Paris Review interview, that he assembles his fiction sentence-by-sentence on individual file cards suggest that Nabokov intended his own novels to be read with similar close scrutiny.' Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that his fiction demonstrates the use of three different kinds of metaphor-by which I mean not the specific figure of speech (some of the examples presented here are technically similes) but, more loosely, a rhetorical device that states an implicit analogy between two unlike things, and that, by so doing, both persuades and challenges the reader.6 At one level, Nabokov uses metaphors as any other writer does: to clarify and intensify a given description. At another level, one requiring more deliberation and self-consciousness but certainly not peculiar to Nabokov, metaphors of the first type collect additional resonance in the context of the entire novel, as they develop, through systematic repetitions of similar imagery, into themes or leitmotifs. Thus the literal meaning of the text (its "plot") is paralleled, echoed, explained, or otherwise refined by its underlying metaphors. The third type of metaphor in Nabokov's fiction-which this essay seeks to define and analyze-is more rare. It is characterized by extended analogies; baroque, seemingly uncontrolled imagery and rhetoric; and inherent ambiguity. It is not unlike the extended Homeric simile; it bears a family resem- blance to what Dr. Johnson called "the most heterogeneous ideas . yoked by violence together" of the metaphysical conceit.' It is an "implicative" metaphor, whose meaning the reader must extract from the image itself, rather than a "summary," "ornamental," or "dramatic" metaphor.8 Its roots in the novel, as will be demon- strated, lie in Nikolai Gogol's absurdly overgrown images and thumb- nail characterizations. Yet the meaning of Nabokov's metaphors-or, more precisely, the way in which their meaning is conveyed-distinguishes them from these predecessors. The relationship between the tenor of the metaphor and its vehicle is neither simple, as in Homer, rhetorical, as in Donne, nor humorous and absurd, as in Gogol. Rather, it is com- pletely and deliberately ambiguous because the initial terms of com- parison are often superseded by additional, deeper meanings not necessarily related to them. The resulting sleight-of-hand is much more startling than Donne's trick of developing, or reducing to https://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol11/iss2/3 DOI: 10.4148/2334-4415.1196 2 Sweeney: Nabokov's Amphiphorical Gestures Sweeney 191 absurdity, the meanings already inherent in his metaphors (for example, in "The Flea" or "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning"). The following passage from Nabokov's autobiography Speak, Memory, in which he recalls his childhood departure from Russia, is a good example of this kind of metaphor, and a useful one to begin with because of its relative simplicity:9 I remember trying to concentrate, as we were zigzagging out of the bay, on a game of chess with my father-one of the knights had lost its head, and a poker chip replaced a missing rook-and the sense of leaving Russia was totally eclipsed by the agonizing thought that Reds or no Reds, letters from Tamara would still be coming, miraculously and needlessly, to southern Crimea, and would search there for a fugitive addressee, and weakly flap about like bewildered butterflies set loose in an alien zone, at the wrong altitude, among an unfamiliar flora."' Initially, the most striking thing about this passage is the amount of information and skillfully developed significance which Nabokov is able to embed into a single sentence (albeit a long and complex one). The reader witnesses a gradual metamorphosis of these miraculous letters as they first search for the addressee (an activity which doesn't necessarily require physical life), and then flap weakly (which does), before turning into butterflies. The simile seems both logical and appropriate; the letters' random movement (which continues the ship's "zigzagging"), combined with their thin, papery texture and rustling noise, naturally suggests the motion of butterfly wings. Yet as Nabokov extends, qualifies, and refines the metaphor, it acquires additional levels of meaning. Such adjectives as "fugitive," "bewildered," "alien," "wrong," and "unfamiliar" complete the imagery and diction of the sentence's beginning (the headless knight, the missing rook, "eclipsed"), yet they also impart more emotional weight to the butterflies. The three prepositional phrases ("in an alien zone, at the wrong
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